Fig. 7: Excessive TGF-β1 and IL6 signaling activation promoted the enrichment of TAM-SPP1⁺ in APHC.

a Bar plot presenting the numbers of putative ligand–receptor pairs between stromal cells and TAM-SPP1⁺ using scRNA-seq data. b Left, heatmap of relative expression across subpopulations of the top predicted ligands expressed by stromal cells using scRNA-seq. Middle, heatmap of significant ligand–receptor pairs between ≥ 1 stromal cell subsets and TAM-SPP1⁺ in scRNA-seq. Right, top predicted ligand colored by activity. c Violin plots showing the expression of TGF-β1 and IL6 in stromal cells. d Western blot analysis of protein expression induced by TGF-β1 (left) or IL6 (right) in THP-1 under the stimulation of PMA at the indicated time points. e Western blot analysis of protein level in PMA-stimulated THP-1 treated with SB431542 (10 μM, left) or Ruxolitinib (10 μM, right) with or without TGF-β1 (20 ng/mL, left) or IL6 (20 ng/mL, right) for 16 h, respectively. f Western blot analysis of protein level with mono treatment or combined treatment of TGF-β1, IL6, and their corresponding inhibitors (TGF-β1, 20 ng/mL; IL6, 20 ng/mL; SB431542, 10 μM; Ruxolitinib, 10 μM). g The concentrations of TGF-β1 and IL6 from homogenates of additional APHC (n = 12) and ANHC (n = 12) patient tissues measured by ELISA.